There's a certain irony to the observation that Tom Hanks today may be better known for flying to the moon than Alan Bean, who actually went there. The actor and director celebrates Bean and laments his anonymity in the pages of "The New Yorker."

Forty-six years ago this week, NASA's first Apollo astronauts to launch into space were circling the Earth, just as the crew's mission patch depicted. The official insignia though, was not what the crew initially envisioned as representing their flight.

A new analysis has pinpointed a few purported problems with the blueprint laid out by the Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2025 as the vanguard of a permanent settlement.

Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft was scheduled to launch on a cargo run to the station on Oct. 24. But that liftoff has been delayed until at least Oct. 27, because Hurricane Gonzalo could affect a tracking station for Cygnus' Antares rocket.

Hubble has spotted three objects that the New Horizons probe could potentially visit after completing its Pluto flyby in July 2015. One of these newly identified bodies is definitely reachable, while the other two require further study.

Two NASA astronauts will venture into the vacuum of space for a spacewalk on the outside of the International Space Station today (Oct. 15), and anyone with an Internet connection can watch it live online.

The first meeting of 'The Astronaut Wives Club' — the made-for-TV-version, that is — has convened in New Orleans. Filming has begun on the 10-episode ABC series, which tells the real story of the women who stood beside the United States' first spacemen.

NASA announced Oct. 9 that it has lifted an order that halted work on commercial crew contracts awarded last month to Boeing and SpaceX, saying that delaying work during an ongoing contract protest could jeopardize the operation of the ISS.

The test flight, scheduled for December 2014, will examine NASA's new spacecraft by flying it farther than any humans have been since the Apollo missions. NASA engineer Kelly Smith takes explains the flight, step by step.

SpaceShipTwo completed an unpowered "glide flight" from California's Mojave Air and Spaceport Tuesday. The vehicle rotated its tail and wings upward during the test, "feathering" them as it would to during the descent phase of a suborbital spaceflight.

An architect with an interest in spaceflight has drafted a design to relaunch the display of a Saturn V moon rocket in Houston. Brantley Hightower's idea for a glass-fronted building came after he visited the booster at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is expected to head to the orbiting lab inside SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft in 2015. The BEAM mission will test out expandable-habitat technology, NASA officials have said.

Lynn Sherr — the author of the recently-released book, "Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space" — paid tribute to the late astronaut Thursday (Oct. 2) on the satirical news program "The Colbert Report."